By 1908, the plume-hunters had so far won the fight for the egrets that Florida had been swept almost as bare of these birds as the Colorado desert.

Until Mr. E.A.  McIlhenny’s egret preserve, at Avery Island, Louisiana, became a pronounced success, we had believed that our two egrets soon would become totally extinct in the United States.  But Mr. McIlhenny has certainly saved those birds to our fauna.  In 1892 he started an egret and heron preserve, close beside his house on Avery Island.  By 1900 it was an established success.  To-day 20,000 pairs of egrets and herons are living and breeding in that bird refuge, and the two egret species are safe in at least one spot in our own country.

[Illustration:  SNOWY EGRETS IN THE McILHENNY EGRET PRESERVE It is at This Period That the Parent Birds are Killed for Their Plumes, and the Young Starve in the Nest Photo by E.A.  McIlhenny]

Three years ago, I think there were not many bird-lovers in the United States, who believed it possible to prevent the total extinction of both egrets from our fauna.  All the known rookeries accessible to plume-hunters had been totally destroyed.  Two years ago, the secret discovery of several small, hidden colonies prompted William Dutcher, President of the National Association of Audubon Societies, and Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson, Secretary, to attempt the protection of those colonies.  With a fund contributed for the purpose, wardens were hired and duly commissioned.  As previously stated, one of those wardens was shot dead in cold blood by a plume hunter.  The task of guarding swamp rookeries from the attacks of money-hungry desperadoes to whom the accursed plumes were worth their weight in gold, is a very chancy proceeding.  There is now one warden in Florida who says that “before they get my rookery they will first have to get me.”

Thus far the protective work of the Audubon Association has been successful.  Now there are twenty colonies, which contain all told, about 5,000 egrets and about 120,000 herons and ibises which are guarded by the Audubon wardens.  One of the most important is on Bird Island, a mile out in Orange Lake, central Florida, and it is ably defended by Oscar E. Baynard.  To-day, the plume hunters who do not dare to raid the guarded rookeries are trying to study out the lines of flight of the birds, to and from their feeding-grounds, and shoot them in transit.  Their motto is—­“Anything to beat the law, and get the plumes.”  It is there that the state of Florida should take part in the war.

The success of this campaign is attested by the fact that last year a number of egrets were seen in eastern Massachusetts—­for the first time in many years.  And so to-day the question is, can the wardens continue to hold the plume-hunters at bay?

THE WOOD-DUCK (Aix sponsa), by many bird-lovers regarded as the most beautiful of all American birds, is threatened with extinction, in all the states that it still inhabits with the exception of eight.  Long ago (1901) the U.S.  Biological Survey sounded a general alarm for this species by the issue of a special bulletin regarding its disappearance, and advising its protection by long close seasons.  To their everlasting honor, eight states responded, by the enactment of long close-season laws.  This, is the